Cardi B's 1-Year-Old Daughter Kulture Lands Her First Magazine Cover

By Paige Gawley‍ 7:14 AM PST, December 9, 2019

Annie Leibovitz

Cardi B is posing with her daughter and opening up like never before about her home life!

The 27-year-old rapper and her 1-year-old daughter, Kulture, are featured on one of the four covers for Vogue's January issue. Kulture, who Cardi shares with husband Offset, looks adorable in her mom's arms in the photo shoot, wearing a red diaper cover that matches her mom's red-and-white polka dot dress by Michael Kors Collection.

Annie Leibovitz

Within the accompanying interview, Cardi discusses how being a mom has fundamentally changed her life, though not her personality or sense of self.

"I could shake my a**, I could be the most ratchet-est person ever, I could get into a fight tomorrow, but I’m still a great mom. All the time I’m thinking about my kid," she says. "I’m shaking my a**, but at the same time I’m doing business, I’m on the phone with my business manager saying, make sure that a percentage of my check goes to my kid’s trust."

"I give my daughter so much love, and I’m setting her up for a future," Cardi continues. "I want to tell her that a lot of the s**t that I have done in life -- no matter what I did, knowing that I wanted to have kids made me go harder to secure a good future for my kids."

For Cardi, it's that thought of securing Kulture's future that makes her work hard every day.

"I’m busting my a** right now so you could have a good car when you’re 18, so you can go to school and have an apartment that I could pay for," she explains. "If my daughter wants to go to college, that’s OK, but I just want her to be an owner of whatever the f**k she wants to own. Just be an owner. Be the boss."

Though she is certainly happy to work hard for the betterment of her daughter, a work-life balance is becoming harder and harder to maintain.

"Flying is hard on Kulture, so if I go to a place and I’m not going to stay more than five days, I’m not bringing her," she says. "But now that’s getting harder, because she’s sleeping on my chest and she doesn’t want to let me go, or she sees you on FaceTime and she’s crying. It’s kind of like a friendship now, and it’s hard to leave your little friend."

"... Things are a little bit harder to balance, but it’s good for the mental," she adds of motherhood. "Like, if I’m playing with my daughter, I forget about the issues."

Annie Leibovitz

One of those issues is social media, something that Cardi credits with having "made" her, but now, she says, it simply "makes everything hard."

"This whole year has just been a lot for me. I feel like people are just so tired of me winning. I will look for my name on Twitter, and it’s like hate tweets, hate tweets, hate tweets," she says. "... When the thoughts go to my head, it just overwhelms me, and it puts me down, and it puts me on social media, and that drives me insane."

A frequent topic of conversation on social media is Cardi's relationship with Offset. The pair split after Offset cheated last year, though they've since gotten back together, much to the criticism of social media users.

"My thing is, everybody on social media acts like relationships is perfect. And that’s crazy to me," she says. "I’m around so many women, and there’s always a woman talking about how she loves her man, but her man is not financially stable, or she has a problem with his mom, or the sex is not as good anymore. Everybody has issues."

"I believe in forgiveness. I prayed on it. Me and my husband, we prayed on it. We had priests come to us. And we just came to an understanding like, bro, it’s really us against the world," she says of her decision to get back together with the 27-year-old Migos rapper. "He has my back for everything, I have his back for everything, so when you cheat, you’re betraying the person that has your back the most. Why would you do that? We have come to a clear understanding. For me, monogamy is the only way. I’ll beat your a** if you cheat on me."

That decision caused "a lot of people" to be "so mad" at her, Cardi says, adding that women specifically "felt disappointed" in her decision.

"But it’s real-life s**t. If you love somebody and you stop being with them, and you’re depressed and social media is telling you not to talk to that person because he cheated, you’re not really happy on the inside until you have the conversation. Then, if you get back with them, it’s like, how could you? You let all of us down," Cardi says. "People that be in marriages for years, when they say till death do us part, they not talking about little arguments like if you leave the fridge open. That’s including everything."

As for the effect that Offset having three other children has on their relationship, Cardi says simply, "the more the merrier."

"When I was pregnant with Kulture, a lot of people was like, oh, he has three kids already; why would you have a kid with somebody that have three kids? And it’s like, how is that such a bad thing?" she says. "My dad has eight kids, and we all get along, and it feels better, fuller. And with Offset, I feel like his kids just bring a pop of fun to life when they’re in his house. I actually love it. It brings out a different side of him that I like to see, and I love to see my baby interacting with her siblings."

Annie Leibovitz

Aside from her personal life, Cardi also gets candid about her work, something she's been striving for since she was young, "distracted" by "the streets," and "being an artist was just so far-fetched." Before her rise to fame, Cardi worked as a stripper, something she credits with saving her.

"At that time I just felt like my world was coming to an end. I was that teenager who was like, I don’t need nobody. But my boyfriend kept cheating on me. He and I used to get into arguments, hitting each other a lot," she says. "... I used to hit my first boyfriend, until he started hitting me back and it just got out of control. But I started stripping, and I made enough money to move out."

Cardi's been open about her past as a stripper -- even starring as one in the Jennifer Lopez flick, Hustlers -- but has received a mixed response from the public.

"Women always want to talk about feminism and supporting everybody, except if it doesn’t fit your category of what to support. Certain women that claim they are feminists only think that a certain type of woman should represent that," she says. "Like oh, you have to have a college degree, and you have to f**king be, practically, like, a senator or Mother Teresa or a Christian holy woman. No, you do not. Feminism means being equal to a man. And I am."

Now though, Cardi is professionally focused on her second album, which will follow her 2018 debut, Invasion of Privacy. After that album's commercial and critical success, Cardi says that working on her sophomore venture, which is due out in 2020, has been "scary."

"The first time it was just me being myself. I didn’t even care if people was gonna like it or not. When I found out I did so good, I’m like, 'Is this a big number?' Everybody was like, 'Yes, this is a huge number,'" Cardi recalls. "So it’s scary because it’s like, now you got to top your first album, and then it’s like, damn. I wonder if people are gonna relate to the new things, to the new life, to the new shit that I gotta talk about now."

"Music is changing. I feel like people just wanna hear twerk-twerk music, but it’s like, is that just a phase? I probably need a sexy song. I need a lot of turn-up songs. I need a slow song, a personal song. And those are harder for me -- I always need help when it comes to talking about my feelings," she continues. "It’s hard for me to be soft, period. So it’s a lot of thoughts, a lot of pressure. It’s really like a job."